Is there anyway i can increase the amount of materials (textures) i can use in the scene at the same time? if so any Info would help, thanks

The number of textures in a scene is, for all intents and purposes, infinite.

If you mean the materials available at any one time in the Material editor - simply reuse the Editor slots as necessary. the Max Help is quite clear on this.

Quote from the help on the Material Editor:-

Important. While the Material Editor can edit no more than 24 materials at a time, a scene can contain an unlimited number of materials. When you are through editing one material, and have applied it to objects in the scene, you can use that sample slot to get a different material from the scene (or create a new one) and then edit it.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.